Nexenta, OpenStorage and Commercial Open Source
Anil Gulecha Developer / Community Lead, Nexenta Core Platform
What we'll cover
Nexenta Core Platform
OpenSolaris
Ubuntu
Nexenta's difference
Distribution Creation
Derivatives
Nexenta.org Commercial Open Source
The OpenStorage Industry NexentaStor
www.nexentastor.org Nexenta Core Platform
Nexenta is a combination of two great technologies:
OpenSolaris : The enterprise class FOSS kernel
Ubuntu userland : The most popular *nix userland and packaging framework
Started in 2005 as a desktop distribution, based on Ubuntu.
Proved hard to support due to small dev team
Starting from early 2008, the project only concentrated on a command-line only core platform, which became known as the Nexenta Core Platform.
The focus was to create the one of the best server platform out there.
NCP: The OpenSolaris side
Nexenta is based on the opensolaris kernel. It thus has goodies like
The ZFS filesystem, which has revolutionized the open source file systems arena.
Dtrace, which provides administrators and developers with the ability to analyze the system in a fine-grained manner.
Zones, the lightweight virtualization which allows for opensolaris (and linux) virtualization on Nexenta.
Nexenta maintains patches of it's own improvements to the OpenSolaris kernel, which includes patches providing iSCSI on ZFS volumes, and CIFS performance.
To fit into the Ubuntu/Debian model, the opensolaris kernel is packaged as .deb packages, for ex:
sunwckr : the core kernel runtime package
sunwzfs : the zfs package
NCP: The Ubuntu side
All userland packages, which include shell commands, server packages, tools and utilities are ports of upstream Ubuntu packages.
Ubuntu has a lot of packages. LTS releases are supported for 3 years.
NCP2 is based on Ubuntu 8.04 packages.
>13000 packages: The most number of packages for any OpenSolaris based distribution.
Enhancements to many core server packages like Apache, rsync, MySql, etc to add support for solaris SMF.
Package commands are same as ubuntu
To install apt-get install apache2
To upgrade apt-get upgrade
To remove apt-get remove apache2 Nexenta's difference
ZFS integrated APT package handling utility
Truly safe Upgrades.
apt-clone install apache2
First, create a clone of the current active root filesystem
Perform apt-get install apache2 in the clone
Add a GRUB entry to enable booting into this clone
Let us say the above command created the filesystem 'syspool/rootfs-nmu-005'
To activate this as the root filesystem upong bootup, run
apt-clone -a syspool/rootfs-nmu-005
You can now reboot, and the system will use this point.
This allows for very safe upgrades.
Devzones
Developed by community member Tim Spriggs Simple dev-env setup Resource Efficient Admin Peace of mind Used for NCP hackathons More details :
devzone.sf.net
Distribution creation
NCP stands for Nexenta Core Platform Iso / Install tools make use of Debian packaging/setup tools like debarchiver and debootstrap
debarchiver debootstrap
NCP Derivatives
NexentaStor
Developer Edition: Gratis version for upto 4TB of storage Enterprise Edition: Licensed version. StormOS
Developed by community member Andrew Stormont Desktop distribution with XFCE Desktop StormOS-builder, Jaunty packages and install improvements http://www.stormos.org Nexenta.org
The hub of all NCP activities Setup as a forge environment
Uses Redmine. Users can setup projects. Get access to wiki, repository. Issue tracker and other tools. Currently hosted projects
Nexenta bug tracker Nexenta's Opensolaris Gate + patches
Nexenta-builder suite StormOS Commercial Open Source
Called the ”OpenCore” model. Open Source core + Proprietary addon Widely used business model
MySQL SugarCRM Alfesco, Terracota, Asterix Nexenta as an OpenCore player
Leader: The fastest growing storage startup Intention is to open complete Developer edition
OpenStorage
Storage is the last bastion of proprietery IT solutions. NetApp and EMC are the big legacy players OpenStorage Entrants:
NexentaStor Sun's Unified Storage Extremely fast growth Open Platform – No Vendor Lockin All of ZFS's goodness
OpenStorage
NexentaStor ● Hardware Independant ● NAS / SAN / iSCSI ● Sync. Replication NexentaStor ● Remote Management ● Analytics Closed Source
NexentaCore Open Source ● Ubuntu #1 community + NCP packaging ZFS ● Solaris kernel ● > Million Downloads ZFS ● Data integrity, end to end OpenSolaris checksumming ● Software Raid. Identifies and corrects data corruption ZFS
NexentaStor
Unified Solution for NAS and SAN Very scalable Unlimited Clones/snapshots Thin Provisioning End to End data Integrity Built in Mirroring & RAID Hybrid Storage Pools
NexentaStor Optional Modules
HA Cluster VM Data Center Target : iSCSI and FC Delorean Worm AutoCDP Multiple Open Source plugins
NexentaStor.org
Hosting site for all NexentaStor open source projects Currently includes
Amanda Backup ATA over Ethernet Benchmarking Clamav Antivirus Ntop Oracle backup
UPS References
http://www.nexenta.org : Home of the NCP project
#nexenta on IRC (irc.freenode.net)
[email protected] - Developer mailing list
[email protected] - User mailing list
http://www.nexentastor.org : Home of the NexentaStor open source projects
http://www.nexenta.com : Commercial home of Nexenta Systems
http://www.stormos.org : The Xfce Derivative of NCP
http://devzone.sf.net : Devzones project
Thank you
[email protected] anilg@#freenode Gtalk: anil.verve facebook/linkedin/twitter: anilgulecha
http://www.gulecha.org